Cave In
by MsWikit
Summary: La'gaan and Conner were given a simple mission. After an unexpected cave in, the two find themselves trapped and are forced to rely on each other.
1. Cave In

A collaboration story with my friend Katelynne! (Also known as masterwitty on Tumblr.)

* * *

Conner sighed as he stuck his rebreather in his mouth for what was probably the hundredth time for this mission alone. How he managed to get stuck as La'gaan's partner he'll never know. Perhaps Kaldur truly thought they'd make good partners, despite their 'disagreements'. Or perhaps his old friend just wanted to see him suffer. To Conner, it seemed like Blue Beetle would have made a better partner because his suit had underwater capabilities. He didn't need an Atlantean to do this mission.

La'gaan was probably thinking along the same lines as he led the way through another underground reservoir. It was supposed to be a simple recon mission, but were they ever? It turned out Conner was stuck swimming his way through miles and miles of underground caves that never seemed to end. Supposedly, Black Manta had set up a secret base somewhere in this labyrinth of flooded tunnels and caverns. If the notorious criminal of the seas really had set up shop down here, they hadn't found any traces of him. Conner was practically praying for an ambush at this point; at least then he would have something other than La'gaan to focus on.

At this point they had lost radio contact with the ground, well, surface, team, so there wasn't even any incessant talking over the radio to distract him. M'Gann was on another mission, so telepathic conversations were out of the question too. It was just him and La'gaan.

"Keep up, chum," La'gaan growled, glancing back over his shoulder.

"Sorry, I wasn't exactly born in the water." Conner shot back.

"No, from what I hear, it was a test tube. Now come on. We still have a lot of ground to cover." With that La'gaan swam ahead, disappearing down another tunnel.

Conner rolled his eyes and swam after the Atlantean. This mission was getting really old, really fast. Tunnel after tunnel, with the occasional reprieve of some cave that managed to be above sea level. They weren't usually very big though, so he was usually back in the water as soon as he was out of it. This didn't bother La'gaan at all, of course. This was his element, which was probably the most frustrating thing about this mission. Conner was forced to turn over leadership to him. What did he know about navigating underwater caves? It infuriated him that, for once, he was the one taking orders.

The tunnel La'gaan had led him down ended up leading to a section that was mostly above water, but the water was still up to the top of Conner's calf muscles. He pulled his rebreather out of his mouth just for the sake of not having to bite on it for a few minutes. He found La'gaan waiting a few feet down the tunnel with his arms crossed.

"Took you long enough." La'gaan said, but Conner wasn't paying attention.

This section of the tunnel was different than the rest of it had been. The walls and ceiling were studded with crystals that seemed to glow, adding a sort of natural light to the cavern. Conner stopped and looked around in silent awe. He'd never seen anything like this before. It was absolutely stunning.

"What?" La'gaan frowned, then glanced back at the cave. "Oh, yeah. I don't guess you've seen this sort of thing before. Earthers don't know what they're missing sometimes. We've got plenty of caves like these near Poseidonis."

Conner just grunted as he pulled himself up and into the cave. "We're stopping here. I need to rest for a second."

"Fine." La'gaan walked away, examining the glowing walls and ceiling. "It doesn't look like anyone has been through here recently. Or ever, actually. We're probably the first ones to ever see this."

"Really? How can you tell?" Conner asked as he walked to the wall opposite of La'gaan.

"Because it hasn't been hacked to pieces," La'gaan replied, setting his hand on one of the larger crystals. "Most of Atlantean jewelry is made out of these. As soon as someone finds a cave like this, they take all the crystals and sell them to cutters. Easy way to make money fast. If you can find crystals, anyway."

"Kind of a shame, that people always ruin natural wonders like this." Conner said.

La'gaan shrugged. "It's the way it is. Now come on, chum."

Conner held back a sigh as he followed La'gaan deeper into the cave. He was going to spend as much time out of the water as possible when this mission was done. Who knows? Maybe if he got lucky his next assignment would be in the middle of the Sahara Desert. He preferred the hot and dry to the dark, damp, and wet any day. Especially if it meant La'gaan wouldn't be there.

They trudged on through the cave. Conner struggled through the water. It had risen a bit to around his knees, and it made it difficult to walk. He was beginning to think this was worse than swimming. It felt like he was dragging something heavy behind him every time he took a step. Meanwhile La'gaan was always at least ten feet ahead, unhindered by the water in any way.

"You move through the water like a guppy." La'gaan said, clearly annoyed that he repeatedly had to wait for Conner to catch up.

"Test tube, remember? I wasn't exactly made to be a natural born swimmer." Conner snapped. If only the Light had thought of that, too. Maybe then this situation would be a bit more bearable.

La'gaan rolled his eyes. "Just hurry up. Why Kaldur'ahm paired us up I will never know."

"We agree on that much, at least," Conner grumbled.

La'gaan shook his head and dived into the next water filled tunnel. It was the only warning Conner had to the drop-off, otherwise he would have just fallen in. After replacing the rebreather in his mouth he followed La'gaan.

They swam for what felt like forever until the tunnel they were in branched off slightly into a bigger one. It wasn't long until La'gaan was swimming back towards Conner signaling that he had found something. Finally.

He did his best to keep up with La'gaan this time, though it was difficult to keep up with someone who could swim almost as fast as he could run. He could see their target up ahead. A small black sub, speeding through the tunnels with reckless abandon. It fired at La'gaan, forcing him to fall back.

Conner turned around as fast as he could, but it obviously wasn't fast enough for La'gaan because a set of claws grabbed the back of his wetsuit and dragged him through the water. He was unceremoniously shoved into the entrance of another small tunnel, quickly followed by La'gaan. Then there was a blast, and a rumbling sound that could only mean trouble for him and La'gaan. Rocks crumbled behind them. Darkness filled the tunnel. For a moment there was nothing but tense silence.

Then he heard La'gaan speak, cursing in Atlantean. "Son of a shark!"

A light suddenly blazed into existence. Conner blinked a couple of times, allowing his eyes to adjust. They were in a very small tunnel. He and La'gaan were barely able to sit side-by-side. The entrance they had come through was now gone. It was nothing but a pile of rocks and sand. In La'gaan's hand was a small ball of glowing blue light. He held it up and looked around, swearing again.

"Well, this is great," he said. "Now what do we do?"

"We find a way out," Conner answered. He frowned. "You know, this wouldn't have happened if you didn't just charge right in."

La'gaan looked at him and snarled. "You weren't exactly trying to stop me, chum! And in case you didn't notice, I just saved your scales back there. Now come on. We have to find a way out of here.

Conner wouldn't admit it but he was kind of impressed by the new display of Atlantean magic. He had had no idea that La'gaan knew any more than being able to puff up, really. Nonetheless, he followed behind the Atlantean again, just like he had for the entire mission, through the small tunnel. This one was definitely a squeeze compared to the others.

At this rate, it didn't seem like the tunnel would ever end.


	2. Puffer Fish Sandwich

Conner tried to squeeze himself through another tight spot in the tunnel him and La'gaan were in, but he got stuck at his waist. He braced his arms on the wall around him but couldn't find the leverage to get himself loose. He groaned internally as he held one of his hands out to La'gaan, looking for the assistance he wished he didn't need. La'gaan grasped his wrist and pulled on his arm while he pushed against the wall with the other one. After a few more tries he was finally free.

"Keep moving, chum." La'gaan swam on, twisting himself to squeeze through the tight spaces and crevices in the tunnel. It seemed that it was only getting smaller and smaller the farther they went. He was getting ready to break something, and it was going to be out of this damn tunnel if he had anything to say about it.

He was not going to get stuck like that again.

"How much longer does this thing go on?" Conner asked.

"How am I supposed to know? It's not on the map Nightwing gave us." La'gaan snapped back, clearly just as frustrated as Conner was.

"So what you're saying is we literally have no idea where we're going?"

"You didn't notice the temperature change twenty feet back? There's got to be some kind of exit around here somewhere." La'gaan stopped for a moment and slammed his fist against a rock that was jutting into their path, almost completely blocking it. The rock crumbled and he continued on.

Conner swam after him, sighing in exasperation. "No, I didn't. I'm not exactly sensitive to slight temperature change." The water really didn't feel any different to him. It must have been an Atlantean thing.

"Well, we're getting close. We're almost- Neptune's beard!" La'gaan cried. The tunnel had come to a sudden stop. There was no other way out. It was a dead end.

"Getting close, huh?" Conner glared at him.

"Oh shut up!" The Atlantean swam forward, setting his hands on the stone. "Maybe we can bust through it."

"Is that your answer to everything? Punch it until something happens?" Conner snapped. "You could cause another cave in!"

"I don't see you coming up with any other ideas!"

Conner glared at La'gaan and clenched his fist before hitting the wall with it. When he pulled his arm back La'gaan swung. Then he swung again, with La'gaan following after him again. They went back and forth like this until Conner's fist broke through.

"Wasn't such a bad idea was it, chum?" La'gaan said as he made the hole bigger.

"No need to be smug about it. You got lucky." He swam past La'gaan once the hole was wide enough, taking the lead for the first time. The tunnel opened up considerably now that they were through. "Is any of this on our map?"

La'gaan looked around, holding up his ball of pulsing light. "Nope."

"Well, might as move ahead because there's nothing behind us." He swam on, not all that surprised as La'gaan slowly made his way ahead of him. He wasn't sure if it was competitive thing or a natural-born-swimmer thing.

Conner's hopes rose as the tunnel started to slowly angle upwards. Maybe this would mean some kind of break from the endless amount of tunnel they just swam through. As chance would have it, he was in luck. The tunnel let out into a half-flooded cave. It wasn't much, but he would take it. He pulled himself out of the water and slipped his rebreather into his pocket.

He looked over when La'gaan swore rather colorfully in Atlantean, using even a few words he didn't know. He had gotten his left leg raised out of the water when his ankle pouch was torn to the point where it's pointless to wear it. La'gaan seemed to realize this as he ripped it off and threw it into the water. Conner thought he spied some kind of scar on the other's leg before it was hastily placed back in the water.

Conner shrugged it off. What did it matter to him if La'gaan didn't want to see whatever was on his leg?

"What happened?" Conner asked, only half-interested.

"Got caught on a rock," La'gaan mumbled.

"Don't get so beat up over it, it's just a piece of clothing." He said. La'gaan had no idea how many shirts he had destroyed in his very short life.

La'gaan frowned at him, but for once didn't have a retort ready. "I'm going to go find us some food. We could be down here a while."

"Food? What food?" Conner looked at him incredulously.

"Fish, obviously." He answered before diving back into the water they had come out of.

Conner hadn't seen a single fish in one of these tunnels. But perhaps La'gaan could find something. Maybe Atlanteans had some sort of built in fish-sense or something. Shaking his head, he climbed up onto a rock that jutted out of the water. It was nice to finally get some rest. And, even better, he finally had some peace and quiet. With La'gaan off hunting for fish, he was finally alone.

He sat with his arms around his legs and his chin resting on his knees. It was nice to be out of the water too, even if he was still wet.

At least now they knew their intel hadn't been false. That submarine that had fired at them - and gotten them stuck in this tunnel - was definitely Black Manta's. They only had a vague idea as to what Manta was up to. Kaldur seemed to think his father was setting up a base of operations, where the Light could easily monitor what was happening in Atlantis. It was, after all, the perfect place. Kaldur had showed him that these caves were in the center of the Bermuda Triangle. Which, as it turned out, was framed by three major Atlantean city-states. (Tritonis, Crastinus, and Neptunis.) It didn't help that these three were at constant conflict with each other. The League was concerned that Black Manta would take advantage of this apparent tension and spark a civil war in Atlantis, as Ocean-Master had failed to do so.

Their mission was of great importance. Especially with tensions running high in Atlantis. Since most of the League had been absent during the trial on Rimbor, Aquaman had been forced to spend more and more time on the surface. In his absence, tensions between the Atlantean city-states had grown to a new level. His return had eased things slightly. But, according to him, murmurs of war and rebellion still spread through Atlantis.

Conner looked up as La'gaan suddenly resurfaced.

"We're eating good tonight, chum." La'gaan said with a grin, holding two pufferfish up by their tails.

His companion briefly wondered how La'gaan was able to catch them in the first place. But, in the end, he decided it was better not to question it. "I heard those were poisonous."

"Oh, they are. Extremely," La'gaan answered. "Though most Atlanteans just get sick from it. They don't die."

"How lucky for you," Conner said flatly. He wondered if he could survive the poison because he was Kryptonian.

"I wound up in the infirmary for two weeks once because I was dared to eat one whole." He said, handing one of the fish to Conner.

It flailed in his grasp slightly. "I'm not eating this."

"Why not? After all the work I went through to catch them?"

"It's still moving." Conner said, exasperated.

"I don't see what the big deal is. We eat live fish all the time in Atlantis." He shrugged.

"That's disgusting."

"It's great. You can feel them wiggling around in your throat when you swallow them." La'gaan said, clearly trying to gross Conner out more than he already was. A devilish smirk passed over the Atlantean's face.

"That's really disgusting. I'm not eating it. It's still alive." Conner said, getting ready to drop in the water.

"It's fresh! Just give it a minute and it'll suffocate," La'gaan insisted as he moved to stop Conner, grabbing the fish by the tail and taking it from him. "Just eat it, chum!"

"It's. Still. Alive." Conner repeated.

La'gaan rolled his eyes and swung the puffer fish at the rock that was next to them. He held the fish in front of Conner's face. "There. Now it's not."

Conner eyed the now limp fish that was hanging from La'gaan's claws. "Fine."

"Great. You have a knife on you?" La'gaan asked. After a moment of digging around in his pockets, Conner pulled out a small pocket knife that he kept with him in case of emergencies. La'gaan went right to work on the fish he'd just killed. First he cut off the fins and the tail. Next was the head, which took a bit of sawing due to the bluntness of the knife. The skin was removed and the organs were separated from the meat that surrounded them. Only one of these organs was removed and thrown into the water. The rest were chopped and slid back into the meat. The process took less than two minutes. Apparently, La'gaan had done this before.

Looking at the fleshy pink mess of a meal made Conner sick to his stomach. But it was all they had. He reached for it, but La'gaan grabbed his wrist to stop him.

"You can't eat that one. I killed it before I cut it," La'gaan told him, frowning. "It releases the toxins into its skin when it dies. If you eat it, you could die. And I don't want to have to explain that to Kaldur'ahm."

With that, he began chopping up the second fish in the same manner. This one, however, was still alive. Its body still moved even after its head was cut off. When La'gaan skinned it, it thrashed around weakly. He moved a bit faster through the next steps, cutting through the meat to the organs and throwing the liver away. Once that was done he slid the freshly butchered blowfish over to Conner.

"Eat up, chum," La'gaan said. He grabbed his fish and bit into it without a second thought.

"Won't you get sick though?" Conner asked. He really didn't want to have to take care of a sick La'gaan.

"No, it's like jellyfish toxins to Atlanteans. We build an immunity to it anyway." He replied through a mouthful of raw fish.

"If you say so." Conner said as he eyed the makeshift sandwich. He wasn't really sure what to call it, but sandwich was the best word he could come up with. The soft pink meat was the 'bread' and the organs were...everything else. After watching La'gaan devour his in forty seconds flat, Conner took a hesitant bite.

He coughed and sputtered. It tasted awful. The meat seemed to slide down his throat. The organs left a faint aftertaste that was probably similar to the taste of rotten beef. But he ate it anyway. La'gaan was right, they didn't know how long they were going to be down here now, and they hadn't brought many supplies with them.

"That was terrible." He said when he was done. The worst part was not having anything to wash it down with because the salt water in the cave would just make him more dehydrated.

"You'll live," La'gaan replied. "It wasn't toxic at least."

"Doesn't make it any less awful." Conner said, refusing to look back on that experience as anything more than horrible.

La'gaan rolled his eyes and started heading towards the end of the cave they hadn't explored yet. "Let's keep moving, shark bait."

"If I'm going to have eat raw fish like that for the rest of this mission then I'd rather starve." He mumbled as he got to his feet again. Trudging through the water after La'gaan, still shuddering at the memory of what he'd just eaten.


	3. ΜΙГΑΣ

Conner pulled himself out of another pool. At least this cave was entirely dry. They'd started this mission almost twenty hours ago, and Conner was exhausted from all of the swimming and wading through water. He needed a break.

"I think this is as good a spot as any to rest for a few hours." He suggested to La'gaan, who had climbed out of the pool before him.

The Atlantean looked around, surveying the area. The cave was smaller than most they'd been through, with stalactites hanging from the ceiling. But it was secure and it was dry. That was enough for them. La'gaan would never admit it to Conner, but he was exhausted as well.

"I guess we should stop for a few hours. Don't want you falling out on me, chum." La'gaan smirked.

So they settled down for the night. They had no supplies and no way to make a shelter. This was never meant to be an overnight mission. The only bright side was that the team would have had to notice their disappearance. Soon a rescue would be on the way. With that thought in his mind, Conner laid down on the rocky floor. He curled up on his side, one arm tucked under his head as La'gaan did the same a few feet away, his back to Conner.

It took Conner a long time to fall asleep, despite the fact he felt extremely fatigued. The cave floor was hard and uncomfortable. Water dripped down from the stalactites above. His companion, however, didn't seem to have any trouble. Only minutes after they bedded down for the night, he could hear La'gaan snoring softly.

Conner didn't remember falling asleep, but when he woke up he was warm. Too warm for someone who had fallen asleep on a cold cave floor in a soaked wet suit. He cracked a heavy eyelid open and found La'gaan's face uncomfortably close. Their noses were almost touching, and their breath intermingled. He tried to move and pull away from the Atlantean, but their arms and legs are tangled with each other's so the only thing he managed to do was wake La'gaan up.

For a moment, he simply froze. He felt like he'd been caught in some unspeakable act, though he couldn't say what. Conner watched La'gaan's eyes slowly open. It took him a few moments to fully wake up. He blinked a few times, adjusting to the dim light of the cave. He yawned. And then, finally, he seemed to realize who it was he was sleeping next to, limbs knotted together.

"Neptune's beard!" La'gaan said, trying to untangle his arms from Conner's. "What are you doing, chum?!"

"I was sleeping! What are you doing?" Conner challenged. He hadn't been the one who scooted three feet over to cuddle La'gaan.

"Sleeping!" La'gaan sat up quickly, crawling back a foot or two.

"Then explain to me how you ended up on my side of the cave." Conner said as he sat up and stretched.

"Explain how you ended up on my side!" La'gaan shot back.

"I wasn't!" He argued. "Look. How about we just forget about it and move on?"

La'gaan narrowed his eyes at him, then huffed and looked away. "...fine. Let's move. Hopefully, the team is looking for us by now."

"I'm sure they've been looking for a while now at least." He knew they were. Kaldur got nervous when he was out of contact with his teammates. The tunnels had made radio communications impossible. And since they hadn't reported in at all last night, there was some cause for worry. Conner only hoped they could find them in this maze.

"Just wait here 'til I get breakfast." La'gaan said before diving into the water. He returned a few minutes later with four fleshy pink fish that didn't appear to have any eyes. They somehow managed to look more unappetizing than the puffer fish. Yet Conner doubted these were toxic. (At least, he hoped they weren't.)

"I can't wait to get out here and get a burger." Conner said as he eyed the fish. "I'm never eating fish again."

"Get over it, shark bait. It's all we've got right now." La'gaan said as he held his hand out for Conner's knife again. He made quick work of the fish, beheading them with one stroke and removing their tails with another. The fins were next, and then he chopped them into smaller pieces. He didn't bother separating the organs from the meat. It all went in together, much to Conner's dismay. Stomaching the raw fish was no easier the second time. He struggled through the meal while La'gaan was finished in just under a minute.

He watched the Atlantean as he ate, since he'd rather not look at the pink fleshy mess that was his breakfast. La'gaan seemed to be on constant alert. His eyes flitted towards the water as if he was expecting an ambush at any moment. (It was a valid fear. They had no idea where they were, much less where the enemy was.) And, for whatever reason, he kept shifting his left ankle underneath his leg. When he wasn't covering it up, he was rubbing it as if it was hurting him. Conner frowned slightly. Had the ankle pouch been more than a pouch? Was it a brace to cover an injury?

"What's wrong with your ankle?" Conner finally asked, shuddering as he swallowed a mouthful of cave fish.

"What?" La'gaan snapped to attention, his hand clamping over his ankle as if Conner had suggested he cut it off. "Nothing. Why?"

There was an unusual sharpness in his voice. (That was saying something, considering how the majority of their conversations went.) Part of Conner wanted to just back off and forget it. But the other part was all the more curious. "You keep rubbing it and hiding it under your leg. If you're hurt, you should just say so-"

"I'm not hurt!" The words seemed to echo slightly in the cave, bouncing off the walls until they faded into silence. "It's nothing."

"Then why do you keep covering it up?" Conner pushed. La'gaan's initial reaction did nothing but fuel his curiosity.

"It's nothing." He growled through clenched teeth.

Conner was convinced something was wrong. La'gaan had either sprained his ankle or cut it on one of the rocks. He was just being too proud to admit it. Rolling his eyes, Conner crawled over and grabbed La'gaan's wrist. "Just let me see-"

There was a small struggle between the two of them. La'gaan swore at him in Atlantean and tried to claw at his face. But in the end, Conner won and managed to yank La'gaan's hand away from his ankle.

ΜΙГΑΣ

It wasn't an injury. It was a word. It had been burned into his skin years ago, Conner assumed. The injury had long since healed. But the scar would remain forever. The thin, pale green lines carried a terrible meaning. In his head, he could still hear Kaldur's words. "They are Ancient Atlantean runes...it spells 'impure'..."

He had had no idea that La'gaan had a mark like this. It made his heart sink to the pit of his stomach. When he had first visited Atlantis, one of Kaldur's old school friends had a similar brand across his entire chest. It had immediately sparked a conflict, even within their group of friends. "I...I've seen that mark before."

Growling, La'gaan hid the mark with his hand again. "Yeah. You were there the day Topo got marked. We're a matched set now."

"I thought the Purists were defeated!" Conner protested. This couldn't have happened after they left. Everything had been settled. Ocean-Master was brought down and his followers disbanded. It didn't make any sense.

La'gaan let out a bitter laugh. "You think just because you helped us take down Ocean-Master, that's it? That it's the end of a thousand year conflict? This has been happening ever since Atlantis sunk into the sea. And it's not going to stop because a couple of earthers fought them off."

An unsteady silence overwhelmed the cave. Neither one wanted to speak. Conner felt angry at himself and, partly, at La'gaan. How was he supposed to know that pouch was to cover a brand? With the way he'd been acting, Conner was sure that La'gaan had managed to hurt himself somehow.

"I'm so-" he started, but La'gaan cut him off.

"Sorry? There's nothing to be sorry for, chum. Not much you can do when twenty people are holding you down when you're a thirteen year old kid," La'gaan spat. The words seemed to come without his permission. He looked away again, glaring at nothing in particular.

"...twenty?" Conner repeated. That seemed like overkill. Twenty people for one little kid? Yet, at the same time, he believed it.

"Give or take. There may have been less, there may have been more. Neptune knows I can't be trusted to remember." La'gaan shrugged.

The tale made Conner's stomach roil, and he was pretty sure he'd almost lost his breakfast. "And they just attacked you because you look like...?"

"...the creature from the black lagoon? For the most part, yeah," La'gaan answered.

Conner paused for a moment. "...what's that?"

"The creature from the black lagoon? It's this really old monster movie M'Gann showed me once. The monster looks a lot like me," La'gaan explained, smirking slightly. "It's really stupid, but I like it. Kind of like Hello-"

"-Megan?" Conner finished for him.

The two stared at each other for a moment, then started laughing.

"M'Gann made me watch it sometimes when we were dating, but it's not like I've seen every episode or anything." Conner continued after their laughter died down.

"My friend Blubber back in Atlantis managed to set up a television broadcast with a few channels on it. One of them has nothing reruns of old shows and movies. I've seen every episode." La'gaan said, before adding, "Twice."

Conner burst out laughing again. "Twice?"

La'gaan grinned good-naturedly. "Hey, it was either watch that or actually study! Besides; it's not as bad as some of the other shows we used to watch."

He found it weird that they were actually laughing instead of arguing. It was...nice. The fighting was a lot more stressful than he had realized. Conner didn't think that he had anything in common with La'gaan at all. (Except perhaps a temper and short patience.) Even though it was something as small as an old TV show, it was middle ground.

"At least you got to go to school. I was stuck in a test tube being telepathically force fed information," he said lightly, not wanting to bring down the mood.

"Don't you go to school now?" La'gaan asked him.

"Well, yeah. But most of my education comes from the first sixteen weeks of my life from the Genomorphs at Cadmus." Conner grinned. Technically a six year old in a sixteen year old's body. It was a strange situation, and he knew it. But it was always funny to see how rookies on the team reacted to it.

La'gaan smirked slightly. "Least they taught you. I wish someone could have just poured everything into my head when I started school. At least enough to let me catch up to everyone else."

"It doesn't matter too much now anymore, right? We should get moving." Conner got to his feet. He watched La'gaan take the lead again, diving back into the water smoothly. After securing his rebreather, Conner followed after him. They swam on through the dark tunnels with La'gaan's magic lighting the way.

Conner figured that they had slept for at least five hours, plus another hour for food, so that brought the mission count up to twenty-six hours. If the team wasn't looking for them by now then something had gone wrong on the surface. They swam at an easier pace than they had earlier with the hopes of covering more tunnels in their attempt to find a way out. They didn't stop for any breaks and they didn't talk much either, but the silence wasn't tense like it normally was. It was more... companionable.

They certainly weren't friends. But the iron curtain that stood between them had been lifted. Now they each stood on their respective sides, looking over curiously but were too cautious to make the first step towards any form of friendship.

The next tunnel they found went so far up Conner's ears popped. He was sure they were actually getting close to the surface, but he'd also lost track of how many times and how far downward they had traveled too. So it wasn't too much of a surprise to him when they ended up in another small cave.

He hauled himself out of the pool as La'gaan said, "Wait here, I'll go find some food." He had slipped back into the water before Conner even had the chance to say anything.

It wasn't long before La'gaan was back with more of the same fish they had eaten earlier. Preparation and consumption had gone exactly the same, and the fish were just as gross the second time as they were the first. When they finished eating they sat on the ground leaning against one of the many rocks.

"At this rate, we're not going to find out what Black Manta is up to," Conner said, frowning slightly. Their mission had definitely gone awry. Not only had they been spotted when they were supposed to be doing recon, but they'd also gotten hopelessly lost. "We'll be lucky if we find our way out of here."

"We'll find him," La'gaan replied. "I never did get that son of a shark back for breaking my arm."

Conner raised an eyebrow. "When did he break your arm?"

"Years ago, when he attacked Poseidonis to get to the Science Center." La'gaan answered. "I was still just a guppy. My friends and I had finished studying for our exams, and decided to take a break and explore the city. We got trapped underneath some rubble after the explosions and a few of us got hurt."

It struck him then that Conner probably didn't know the full extent of Black Manta's crimes. He had heard mentions of city-states and outlying towns that had been terrorized by the underwater criminal. But he didn't realize just how many people these attacks effected until just now. "I'm sorry."

La'gaan smirked and shrugged. "Just a broken arm. The healers patched it up in a day."

"But they couldn't...?" Conner began, glancing at La'gaan's ankle. His hand was over the scar again, instinctively hiding it from view.

The smirk vanished in an instant. Conner suddenly regretted asking. "No; it was inflicted with magic. Those are a lot more...difficult to heal. And it always leaves a scar."

An uncomfortable silence fell between them. After what felt like an hour of listening to the almost imperceptible sounds of the cave, Conner spoke again. "That attack on Poseidonis...did anyone die?"

It wasn't the most light-hearted subject, but it rejuvenated the conversation. La'gaan nodded grimly. "I think maybe twenty people. Hundreds were injured."

"And who knows what he's planning now," Conner said, frowning.

"We'll find him, chum," La'gaan assured him. "We found him once. We can do it again."

Conner wasn't so sure, but he didn't want to argue the point. They'd had another long day of swimming and squeezing through tight tunnels. He guessed it had been probably forty-five hours since they'd last had contact with the surface. It was beginning to wear on the both of them. They were tired and sick of seeing nothing but rocky tunnels and damp caves. And a couple of small cave fish didn't provide nearly enough nutrients for two young men. Not even La'gaan seemed to be satisfied with their meals. But pickings were slim in this place, and they had to make do. Hopefully they would find a way up to the surface soon. (Or a search party would find them.)

"Let's get some rest," Conner finally suggested.

There was a silent agreement between the two of them to lay with their backs pressed together. Neither of them really wanted to deal with the awkwardness of their last up close and personal encounter. Doing it this way was more of an acknowledgement between the two of them that it might happen again because it was cold and wet, and they could use all the warmth they could get.

Once again, the Atlantean seemed to fall asleep almost immediately. Conner was on the verge when he felt La'gaan move behind him. Instead of his entire back being covered by La'gaan's he felt the Atlantean's face press against his back between his shoulder blades. His arms and hands rested against his back where they were tucked under his chin.

He wasn't sure why but it made him feel warm all over despite the dampness of the cave and the wetness of his suit.


End file.
